WAVES

Here on Kahana Beach, I have had two weeks to think about waves.  The screen doors to our sleeping room remain open for the cooling trade winds, so the constant crashing waves soothe us to sleep, a welcome diversion from Seattle’s mid-city traffic.  But there are similarities.  Whereas the all-night movement of vehicles on our city street, coincidentally called East Aloha, is occasionally interrupted by an emergency siren, so too the predictable waves periodically burst upon the rocks like a bass drum upstaging a symphony.  We are not startled into wakefulness, although an accompanying tropical storm, slamming its arrival against the screen, will shake us so we slide the glass door shut and turn off the ceiling fan.

Daytime, the waves froth over the lava rocks, hiding the most jagged peaks.  In their rush to slam against the sea wall, they carry turtles along for the ride. (In the lower middle of the photo you may spot a turtle’s shell)  Sea turtles feed on the greenery on rocks along the shore, so succumbing to slamming against the boulders is like an encouraging push forward to feasting.  Huge shells, some the size of a dinner table, ride just below the water’s surface.  Whether the flippers help the turtle to navigate at this point is unclear.  Rather they seem to give in to the waves’ force, all decision-making left to momentum.  There must be a lesson for us there, something about trusting what carries us ahead.

Does one wave differ even slightly from another?  Why do I admire the pearly opalescence of some waves while others roll over in a blue-green sameness?  How is it that the sea before me may depict a calm plane for miles out, then spot itself with wavelets where there are no rocks to be seen for crashing?  Had a whale passed by?  Was there a sandbar too far out for my imagination?

Those are five sequential questions for which I have no definitive answer.  So much for Oceanography 101.  No mind.  Poetic connections to the waves complement what science offers. The string of curling waves evokes images of peppermint ribbon candy. When the wave hits the rocky coastline, it splashes high and frothy as thrilling fireworks, then recedes leaving a damp memory on the stones.

Currently, I am reading Virginia Woolf’s novel, The Waves, a story that is an accumulation of soliloquies from siblings who, unique in temperament, are together an amalgamation of consciousness.  It is as if Woolf wants us to see one identity made up of separate souls.  How appropriate, then, to call her work, The Waves.  Looking out now at wave after wave approaching, then receding to the ocean, I can follow one just so far before it is consumed by its neighbor and they become one wave.

Most of our planet is surfaced by the sea, yet until we are slammed by a tsunami, we look landward.  The waves reflect our own inspiration, they inhale and exhale, a lub/dub of each heartbeat.  Perhaps that is what makes the sound so comforting.  It asks for familiarity, for identifying with its life force.  All it takes is one venture in for a swim to trust those inhales and exhales.  Gingerly, I walk across the sand, my feet sinking its prints until the place where the water has washed up, erasing sandcastles and the presence of swimmers before me.  I take cautious steps forward, letting the wavelets tease me, toes-first.  Step, sink a little, step again.  As the waves surge to my knees I look out, guessing where the next large wave will rise.  Will it break on top of me, sucking me helplessly under, grinding my face to the sand?  Or do I wait until the breaking point and dive within its incoming belly, emerging only when the wave has receded for the next roller behind it. I dive.  How successful I feel emerging up through the wave that took me, then I swim in a parallel line to the beach, far enough out to spot the fish, but close enough to see the shore where I want to return.

Alas, returning to shore requires more tact than knowing when to interrupt a conversation.  I focus on the shore where I will land; my back must be to the waves.  I have to allow a wave to ride me inland.  I need to have my feet within inches of the sand so I can set them firmly for a fierce run up the beach before a kindred wave chases the one that carried me in, and thus sucks me back to the deep or splays my body across the sand.  I have experienced both scenarios.

We have been coming to this small Maui resort for two weeks every February for over twenty years.  On each visit, we note how the waves have chewed up more of the beach and/or the retaining wall that keeps the condos high and dry.  The beach was once long enough for an invigorating walk at low tide toward a cave in the far rocks, a place I led my small grandchildren where we imagined pirates storing chests of gold doubloons, then hurried back before an incoming tide flooded the crevices in the rock.  No tide is low enough to allow that walk today.  Nearby, huge tractors work to restore a wall that had shored up the property of a wealthy landowner, his estate now several feet closer to sinking into the sea.  Once long, the beach now is but a patch of sand.  From half a world away and in eighty-degree heat, melting ice caps deliver messages in the rising seas.

When we return to Seattle at the end of the week, the weather will not encourage opening windows to hear nature’s noise.  Traffic will replace the rhythmic surge of water plunging through my dreams.  There I will look out for waves of spring rain, daffodils bending before each in-coming breeze.

Author: Mary After Seventy

I am a retired teacher, poet, community volunteer View all posts by Mary After Seventy